E.T. Knows Best

have you ever noticed when you go on a road trip that the signs you see showing the names of towns would make great names for characters in a novel? here's what i mean:

Ayer Littleton

Webster Sturbridge

Preston Ledyard

Sterling Moosup

Jewett Griswold

and my favorite - Cudworth Shrewsbury

yeah, they just get weirder and weirder, don't they?

it has long been a secret fantasy of mine to write a short story that incorporates these strangely impossible names for its fictional characters - i suppose there is a remote chance that there are people somewhere who actually answer to names like these... very, very remote

i think it would be more difficult to come up with these random names in a region where there is an abundance of, say, Native American place names (tahopakaliga? econolockahatchee? penobscot? hammonnassett? it would be tough to make names out of those incredible words, right?) it would probably also work with Spanish- or German-sounding names, or even where other languages like French and Scandinavian were prominent - but for now i'll stick to English words that i am able to join together to make credible-sounding names...

yeah, this is what i do for fun when i'm looking out the window at road signs - even more fun than those silly South of the Border billboards!!

and that's my thought for today, the first day of february... happy FEB, everyone!

Winter With A Vengeance

Take a look at winter - the only thing that's missing are some mountains and a glacier!

While it's quite snowy and cold here, it's not nearly as crazy as it is in some other places in the country - so I salute all those Americans (and, well, all those Europeans and Scandinavians and Asians, etc., too) who get out there and shovel snow and take care of animals and help their neighbors and go to work and deliver the mail and make dinner and run errands and do all those things that still have to be taken care of even when there are several feet of snow to get through - THANK YOU!

so enough about snow this week - soon it will be a distant memory...

in the meantime, visit this web site to learn about Wilson Bentley (a.k.a. "The Snowflake Man" 1865 - 1931), who discovered that no two snowflakes are the same.

http://snowflakebentley.com/index.htm

Using his mother's microscope, this native Vermonter began studying snowflakes at a young age and learned the difficult art of photography just so he could photograph them. Here's some of what you'll read:

HE WAS KNOWN TO THOUSANDS around the world as the Snowflake Man. His researches into the mysteries of rain and snow were discussed in over 100 newspaper and magazine articles, in 10 technical articles in the Monthly Weather Review, and in his book 'Snow Crystals." His painstaking work, carried out entirely by himself on his small Jericho farm, was so thorough and gave such new insights into the formation of precipitation that he deserves the title of America's First Cloud Physicist.
The Bentley homestead was in a valley on the east end of Jericho snuggled up at the base of Bolton Mountain. The country winters were long and hard, and in those days attendance at the one-room schoolhouse was very infrequent. Perhaps it was because of this that Bentley obtained his lifelong passion to study and understand water in all of its forms-dew, frost, clouds, rain, and especially snow in the form of ice crystals. At the age of 60 he recalled those early days:
"I never went to school until I was fourteen years old. My mother taught me at home. She had been a school-teacher before she married my father, and she instilled in me her love of knowledge and of the finer things of life. She had books, including a set of encyclopedia. I read them all.
"And it was my mother that made it possible for me, at fifteen, to begin the work to which I have devoted my life. She had a small microscope which she had used in her school teaching. When the other boys of my age were playing with popguns and sling-shots, I was absorbed in studying things under this microscope: drops of water, tiny fragments of stone, a feather dropped from a bird's wing, a delicately veined petal from some flower.
"But always, from the very beginning, it was snowflakes that fascinated me most. The farm folks, up in this north country, dread the winter; but I was supremely happy, from the day of the first snowfall - which usually came in November - until the last one, which sometimes came as late as May."

Gauguin Defines Art

i came across a quote that i felt compelled to share today:
"Art is either plagiarism or revolution." ~ Paul Gauguin, 1848 - 1903
i don't happen to agree with PG that it's one or the other - whenever i create something i don't feel that i'm being derivative or that i'm rebelling against anything - i just play until something appears and then i tinker with it until i'm happy with it - but i don't think he was a very happy person, except perhaps when he was painting or having sex with anyone, so i guess that's just how he saw things back then...

pictured above are:
self-portrait of PG
where do we come from? what are we? where are we going?
the sorcerer of hiva oa


here's a little history of Gauguin, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Paul Gauguin was born in Paris, France to journalist Clovis Gauguin and Alina Maria Chazal, daughter of the half-Peruvian proto-socialist leader Flora Tristan, a feminist precursor. In 1851 the family left Paris for Peru, motivated by the political climate of the period. Clovis died on the voyage, leaving three-year old Paul, his mother and sister to fend for themselves. They lived for four years in Lima, Peru with Paul's uncle and his family. The imagery of Peru would later influence Gauguin in his art.

At the age of seven, Gauguin and his family returned to France. They moved to Orléans, France to live with his grandfather. He soon learned French and excelled in his studies. At seventeen, Gauguin signed on as a pilot's assistant in the merchant marine to fulfill his required military service. Three years later, he joined the French navy where he stayed for two years. In 1871, Gauguin returned to Paris where he secured a job as a stockbroker. In 1873, he married a Danish woman, Mette-Sophie Gad. They had five children over the next ten years.

I Raro te Oviri, 1891, Dallas Museum of Art

By 1884 Gauguin had moved with his family to Copenhagen, where he pursued a business career as a stockbroker. Driven to paint full-time, he returned to Paris in 1885, leaving his family in Denmark. Without adequate subsistence, his wife (Mette Sophie Gadd) and their five children returned to her family. Gauguin outlived two of his children. Like his friend Vincent van Gogh, with whom in 1888 he spent nine weeks painting in Arles, Paul Gauguin experienced bouts of depression and at one time attempted suicide. He made several attempts to find a tropical paradise where he could 'live on fish and fruit' and paint in his increasingly primitive style, including short stays in Martinique and as a labourer on the Panama Canal construction; however, he was dismissed from his job after only two weeks. In 1891, Gauguin, frustrated by lack of recognition at home and financially destitute, sailed to the tropics to escape European civilization and "everything that is artificial and conventional".^[3] His time there, particularly in Tahiti and the Marquesas, was the subject of much interest both then and in modern times due to his alleged sexual exploits.^[4] He was known to have had trysts with several peripubescent native girls, some of whom appear as subjects of his paintings.^[5]

In 1903, due to a problem with the church and the government, he was sentenced to three months in prison and fined. At that time he was being supported by the art dealer Ambroise Vollard^[6] He died of syphilis before he could start the prison sentence. His body had been weakened by alcohol and a dissipated life. He was 54 years old.

Gauguin died on 8 May 1903 and is buried in Calvary Cemetery (Cimetière Calvaire), Atuona, Hiva ‘Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia.

in other news: (newer edited version 2/01/11)
new england has turned into a bonafide winter wonderland, folks - my husband says this is the most snow he's seen here in 20 years - everyone's digging out today but there's a parking ban for the entire town until tomorrow afternoon to give the plows time to get things plowed - only there's no place to put the new snow except on top of all the old snow!

anyway, snow snow snow - what's all this talk about snow - we're warm-ish and dry and still have power, so i feel pretty good about all that

more soon - happy snow - i mean, happy january! TJ

it's a new year - for some

that said -

a bird flew into the front of my car yesterday - so the year is already over for that sweet little soul - the poor thing was having an altercation with two crows (ravens?) and made the mistake of flying too low and right into my car - i was inconsolable for most of the day - i kept seeing the horrible scene over and over - eventually it receded enough for me to function and get through the day at work but i intend to make amends by feeding every bird in my neighborhood (as well as every squirrel, chipmunk, raccoon, possum and cat who traverses my back yard)

in other news - i am slowly making headway in my quest to conquer the upstairs madness that is my "art studio" - i have cleared some space at one end and actually have it looking rather nice, with crystals in the window, some plants and family photos - but there's a long way to go - oh, yes, a very long way to go

i have been doing other things that are good for me - getting more exercise, eating better (and less), creating things (mostly mixed-media collages in an art journal i got for christmas) - and i believe others are following suit (my brother has started going for bike rides - you go, bro!)

i suppose i need to post some sort of photo now - hopefully it will relate to this post in some odd way - but i wanted to post something before the month was out

happy new year to all and to all a good year - love/peace/hope - TJ

Autumn leaves

It's October!!

Happy Autumn! Plenty of blustery wind & rain today - still lots of leaves on the trees, but many have already turned red & yellow and fallen on the ground - so, will there be anything left by Hallowe'en? Probably not...

Mmmmmm - Hallowe'en~!

I took the photo this time last year - just a portent of things to come

October is a lovely month - changes in the landscape, weather and mood - I am trying to declutter my space (how many years has it been going on now?) to make room for my creative muse and I to work on many unfinished projects - sewing, making cards & jewelry, etc (the good thing is that I've been finding things I had given up for lost!!) I will try to document some of this process and blog about it (boring) but hopefully there will be creative things to share as well

Happy happy October!!!

rest in peace

yesterday (september 9) it's been a year since my stepdad passed away - for a while, i was having mixed feelings about the whole thing, but prevailing winds dictate that he is missed by us all (my mom, my brother, his two kids, me not the least...)






born in 1935 somewhere in Louisiana bayou country, he and his seven siblings did not have an easy life - he ended up serving in the Air Force for 20 years, got married and had three children - he traveled all over the world and moved his family to california - his youngest daughter died at the age of four of some type of cancer, i believe, leaving behind a brother, a sister and two grieving parents - after that, his marriage ended and he migrated to texas and then florida, where he met my mother, who was herself recently divorced from my father - after a couple of years, they got married and were together (ostensibly happily) for 25 years - he drank and smoked more back then, like a lot of folks did - they both worked hard, danced to zydeco music, went on trips and had a good life - eventually he gave up liquor but clung to his smokes


as he was entering his seventies, his health began to deteriorate - now he was dealing with chronic back pain and Parkinson's-like symptoms (which include the inability to write legibly, difficulty swallowing, speech impairment and mobility problems) he grew frustrated and short-tempered - his sense of humor evaporated and he became critical of everything we did - nothing we did was good enough, he found fault with everything - it's difficult to be compassionate when someone's being berated on a daily basis, but we kept trying - in the end, he made some questionable decisions (we thought later that perhaps his judgment had become faulty due to pain medication he was taking) and finally, after several visits by EMTs he went into the hospital, where he got weaker and then died


i don't think he ever imagined it would end that way (none of us did) but i suppose he was sick and tired (literally) of continuing to live with his difficulties and the constant pain - the strain on his heart and other vital organs (all compromised by this time) seemed to be too much - he told my mother "i don't think i'm going to make it" (one of the few things he managed to say, since most of the time he was under sedation and on oxygen) he even told the doctor he was "ready to go" shortly before he breathed his last breath


i tell this cautionary tale not to besmirch his name but to illustrate that the human condition is transitory and mutable - we are all attached to our own silver cord and when our life force ebbs we must grab it and follow it back "home" to learn our lessons and prepare for whatever is next for our soul's growth (one of my favorite movies on this topic is albert brooks' hilarious yet poignant "Defending Your Life" with meryl streep, rip torn, lee grant and buck henry - another good one is warren beatty's 1978 comedy "Heaven Can Wait" where beatty is teamed with the wonderful jack warden, james mason, buck henry - again! - charles grodin, dyan cannon and julie christie: it's a brilliant remake of another great film, 1941's "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" with robert montgomery, evelyn keyes and claude rains)


to sum it all up, he was a good person who, under duress, said and did things that were out of character and not up to his own standards, but he did the best he could and eventually welcomed death quietly and bravely, like a good soldier - for years he fought the good fight and made a good life for himself and my mom - he was like a second father to my brother and me - he loved his own kids, and he loved my mother, although they were often see-sawing between sweet devotion and bitter agitation, like so many couples who have been together for 25 or more years - i choose now to remember him as a nice guy who was always there for us and made us laugh - he has gone on ahead to complete the hero's journey and figure out where his next path will lead - rest in peace, A.J. - we miss you

please take a number

photo by tjgoogins/moon at EPCOT/all rights reserved



today is my brother's birthday


the interesting thing about it is (and he gets credit for noticing this before i did) that this year i turned 57 in may and he turns 53 today - what's interesting about this is that he i was born in '53 and he was born in '57


although this may seem unusual, apparently this is not uncommon among siblings - i have done no research on it, but i talked to another person who told me the same thing happened to her and her sister


something similar happened to me and a friend of mine - five years ago i turned 52 and she turned 25 - amazingly, when i'm 63 she'll be 36 - and so on, every 11 years... too bad we're not friends anymore, i'd like to see how it all turns out - perhaps pythagoras was right - the universe is made up of numerical sequences or some such thing


at any rate, i want to salute my brother - talented musician, animal lover, turtle and dog rescuer, handyman, good son, brother and friend, and all-around funny guy - on the occasion of his 53rd birthday - i love you, bro!!


love, sis